Richard Matheson Dead At 87

“It is my conviction that basic Reality is not all that perplexing. What seems difficult to assimilate are the manifold details of Reality, not its fundamental elements.” Richard Matheson

His TV credits include more than a dozen episodes of “The Twilight Zone.” One of the most memorable was“Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,”featuring William Shatner as a passenger on an airplane who’s convinced that the flight is doomed by a gremlin on the wing. John Lithgow reprised the role in 1983’s “Twilight Zone: The Movie.”

“Duel,”the 1971 made-for-TV movie that was directorSteven Spielberg‘s first feature-length film, was based on Matheson’s adaptation of his short story about a truck that menaces a driver on a lonely road.